


Angels in the Higher Chords

by spacejargon



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content, Sexual Violence, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 08:20:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18634375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacejargon/pseuds/spacejargon
Summary: “You believe in Heaven and all that jazz, Arthur Morgan?”Arthur catches the wrong side of the law.





	Angels in the Higher Chords

“If you scream high enough, maybe they’ll hear you.”

The shotgun points toward the ceiling of the heavens with a dismissive sneer. So far, it’s a gray-white ceiling of an interrogation room. Or a prison cell, either way.

“You believe in Heaven and all that jazz, Arthur Morgan?”

Arthur, bruised black and blue from head to toe, pretends to ponder it. “Never been the religious sort,” he gives, rolling the words off his thick tongue sitting in a pool of his own bloodied saliva. Tastes like the dirt they shoved his face to, once they decided to play dirty and chuck dynamite at his horse so they’d guarantee a fall. Only way to catch him, he realizes how cowards play the game. “Does it got any pretty angels lookin’ for bad men like me?”

The agent sneers in disgust. “You’re a sick man,” he snaps, shaking his head. “Wouldn’t expect any less of a criminal like you. Tell me, you get off on that kinda talk, or are you really not as bad as you say you are?”

Arthur raises one bloodied eyebrow and fixes him with a glare. “Do I look real friendly to you, Agent?”

The agent chuckles to himself. “No, no you don’t. You look like the kind of man that would sell his own wife and kids for a cheap buck. You look like the type of man to sell out anyone and everyone, and if they look at you funny, you’ll kill them too.”

Whistling lowly, Arthur knows he has the man’s attention. “Well, I’d say you got me pretty good there, Agent. Here I was getting’ worried when you started preaching ‘bout Heaven and angels to me. Like it’d make a difference.”

The agent leans against a desk and clicks his tongue, inspecting the pistol in his hands. “So you don’t believe in Heaven, which must mean you don’t believe in Hell. Right, Morgan? Some godless man like you has no need for the practicality of faith.”

“Oh, I _have_ faith,” Arthur’s broken lips split in a dangerous smile, “but it ain’t in devils with pitchforks and angels with fluffy white wings and halos. I’m a bad man—I’ll take my chances, but not with what can’t shoot me. I don’t care much for fairness, but I do care if I’m breaking halos.”

The agent snorts with an ugly grunt. Arthur grins at him with a viciousness reserved for animals like him and doesn’t move his eyes as the agent glances away.

“If it makes you feel any better, Agent, farmers got pitchforks. You’ll find your faith in them. Nasty bastards, they are.” Arthur leans back—for all he can, it’s not far, handcuffed as he is. “Wait, I forgot—you probably don’t even know what they are, since you never spend any time outside your little civilized _bubble.”_

The shotgun reacquaints itself with his chin, snapping his jaw shut. “I hunt down animals like you, so I’d say I have plenty of experience of crawling in filth. Any good hunter studies their prey.”

“Oh, so you hunt?” Arthur resists rolling his eyes, voice taking on a sharper edge. “Tell me, you get dirty enough to pick up the fleas, too? ‘Cause you look like a bloodsucker to me.”

The butt of the shotgun slams into his temple, wrenching Arthur’s head back with a crack. “Keep looking for angels, Morgan,” the agent sneers as he comes close, a hand fisting in Arthur’s bloody, matted hair and tipping his head back. Blood trickles from his nose as a new bruise forms on his face. “You’re going to need them soon enough.”

The gray-white of the ceiling burns into his eyes as Arthur feels a hand at his throat, squeezing tight as another pries his maw open and shoves in a leather belt.

“Better start prayin’, boy,” the agent leans in, tightening his fingers in Arthur’s hair and bends until he feels like his neck’s going to snap. “’Cause you’ll be screaming soon enough.”

With a whip-crack jab to his ribs by the butt of a gun, he feels the bones snap like a sparrow’s between his fingers. It’s only in seconds between the gaps of fingers that he feels hands prying his back, waiting until they pop and the bones shatter in twisting breaks.

A smile of crooked teeth splits in his eyes, black threatening to take over him.

Sinfully sweet, the agent backs away, surveying how Arthur’s muscles strain against his skin, threatening to break through as the four men holding him descend upon him.

“Welcome to Sisika Penitentiary, Arthur Morgan.”

~

True to Agent Penn’s word, they find the screams he’s looking for. Once they pry him open and reach inside his throat, slithering all the way down to his cracked ribs, they wrap their slimy hands around what they can reach and _pull._

Blood paints the walls like the aftermath of stepping on a landmine. The Pinkerton agent, a religious man who touches his throat with the fondness of an ex-man of the cloth, oversees every last kick and slap. Arthur, to his credit, manages not to look like the end process of a meat grinder within the several hours that pass since waking up with Agent Penn standing over him.

The interrogator, another agent from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, ensures that each blow is planned. The guards do most of the heavy lifting, from choking Arthur to near unconsciousness to dunking his head under water.

They have him hanging by a hook, the chains of handcuffs hooked through by the butcher’s hook to hoist him off the ground. With his hands raised above his head, they rip off his shirt and feed him to the wolves as they beat him with anything from books to belts.

Arthur is anxious when it all stops, bruised and throbbing but little blood covering him. There’s a blindfold over his eyes reeking of alcohol, a belt fastened around his mouth to keep him from speaking. Or biting his tongue off, as they seem keen on either. But he can still hear despite the ringing in his ears from his head being slammed against the floor one too many times, and the clicking of boots fading away is no comfort to him.

The _crack_ of a whip snapping through the air has an involuntary shudder wrenched from his gut.

“I won’t ask if you feel like talking, since I’m not interested in what you have to say.” The interrogator, a big, burly man with a devil’s face and a soulless quality to his eyes, comes closer. His footsteps are the heaviest, spurs on the back of his shoes something Arthur remembers from the fondness in which Thomas Burr dug into the sides of his spine

They’d had a brief introduction once Agent Penn stepped aside. For the purposes of novelty, or so Burr claimed, when he’d kicked Arthur in the side and waited until Arthur had spat blood to introduce himself.

The whip creaks in leather gloves. The bastard must be getting off on this, Arthur can hear the smirk in his voice. “I know you can scream, Morgan. I heard you earlier, yipping like a beaten dog when we tried to snap your arms like twigs.” His French accent sounds too fake to be anything but from Saint Denis, a cheap impostor of the real thing. Henri Lemieux would be proud. “So, you still have some left in you? I think we haven’t heard your best.”

Drool dribbles over Arthur’s cracked lips. He tenses, earning a chuckle from Burr. His leather gloves creak, heightening the anxiety lying in a buzz underneath Arthur’s skin. “Well, come on then,” he snarls, “sing for me, you filthy rat.”

The whip chokes the breath out of him when it strikes. Stings like a thousand horses kicking him at once, the metal blade of the tip slashing Arthur open from shoulder to hip. Blood wells up and oozes from him as the skin rips audibly, tearing at the seams like cutting through worn leather.

Arthur gasps, groaning as a shudder wracks his body with the force of an electric current from a downed power line. Burr surveys him as Arthur pants, coughing muffled by the leather in his mouth that has been scarred by teeth cutting clean through the upper layers.

“Come on, then!” The whip snaps again, painting an equal slash that cuts through a nipple. Arthur lurches and feels the scream bubbling in his throat, shivering as he grunts and snorts like a wild horse being broken in. He doesn’t get a second more to breathe, the whip cracking against his chin and curving down his jawline with a bruising ferocity.

The guards to either side of him, reeking of his blood, stay clear away as the whip snaps again and again, until Arthur’s front is draped in long stripes of red. Where there were bruises more blood seeps through, turning a swollen reddish-purple color as Burr continues with lazy flicks of the wrist.

“Turn him around!” The whipping stops long enough for Arthur to feel himself spin a semicircle, gloved hands gripping his hips and legs. A pin comes between the twisted chains, holding him in spot as he now faces a wall.

He waits. Waits for it in anticipation but he never can get used to the sting when it hits, sizzling like a snare. The whip breaks against the skin of his back and he cries out, jerked forward by the force as it cuts through him like a knife.

“Scream, boy!” Burr cackles as the whip flies free, sinking into Arthur’s bruised flesh with sickening pops. “Let the angels in God’s almighty Heaven hear you! Let the tortured souls you sent home hear the agony you deserve!”

The whip’s bladed tip cuts too deep over his ribs. He gasps and jumps, arms numb and blood pounding in his ears. The darkness he can’t see through makes it worse, waiting for the next blows that follow no order.

“Take his clothes off,” Burr barks another order in his heavy accent, thickened with pleasure as he watches Arthur drip like a fish in the process of being gutted. More so like a pig, cuts sinking deeper in his flesh to the whiter tissue below.

The air simmers. Hesitation hangs in the air with Arthur’s tongue nearly cleaved in two from biting it hard enough. “Come now, gentlemen. He’s only a man in the flesh. Animals like him only look like us, but do not deserve any compassion for which we afford the _civilized_ world.” A hand grabs his face roughly, jerking Arthur’s throat to be bared for all to see. “Even beasts we afford more concern than this monster. He is a devil in the flesh, even if looks deceive you.” Then, Burr draws closer. Close enough to spit on, if Arthur could summon the will to. “Isn’t that right, pretty boy?”

His jeans are cut from his sides. “Don’t worry gentlemen, we’ll dress him like any other pig,” Burr promises in a grandiose way that carves a hollow in the space of Arthur’s throat. Tears burn in Arthur’s eyes from the sting of blood assaulting his nose, dripping down his cheeks as he remains forcefully silent.

The rest of his clothes come off with knives digging into his flesh. He hisses when they press too hard, cuts forming where they cut off the rest and leave him bared to the rest of the world. Burr hisses with a satisfied laugh, sounding awfully pleased with himself.

“So, you’re just as human as the rest of us,” Burr’s fingers tighten over Arthur’s jaw, pressing the skin of his cheeks into Arthur’s grit teeth. “Best be careful then, or I’ll be sure to watch you drain yourself dry, from all your struggling.”

The implication has Arthur panting hard, tremors starting once again as they crawl through his numbed arms and aching legs. Exposed like this, Burr’s hand drops from his jaw and trails over the cuts on Arthur’s chest, tracing down his navel and to the bones of his pelvis.

“In France you’d make a fine toy,” Burr murmurs lowly, Arthur feeling exactly where his eyes land on him as his stare burns holes in him. “Too bad _America_ doesn’t adopt the same liberties.”

The press of a knife against the skin of his shaft. Arthur grunts and flinches, pain rucked up from his core with the jerky movements. His heart pounds wildly in his chest, lungs refusing to inflate like broken water skins where the water leaks profusely through a hole in the seams. A pitiful murmur escapes him as the tip of the knife presses down, tracing a path from the base to the head.

The blade presses against his slit. “Pretty boy for such an ugly profession,” Burr presses the knife, a choked noise coming from Arthur as he tries not to writhe. “God makes the finest creatures, and demons like you walk amongst us, wearing our skins. What a crime against humanity.”

A squeeze of his balls has Arthur cringing and shakily gasping, breath just out of reach. Burr watches with perverse interest, the tip of his blade pressuring the skin until blood splits and Arthur lets out a whimper.

“Save your breath for screaming, boy,” the command wraps around his ears and trickles down his throat. “Otherwise no one will hear you.”

Then Burr turns, sinking the dagger into Arthur’s thigh and ripping away a terrible scream. It grows louder when the dagger twists, pitched higher as the air scrapes against the back of Arthur’s throat and cuts through his teeth.

 _“Good boy,”_ Burr purrs, and then reaches for the whip curled on his hip.

~

Arthur’s screams light up the damp and dank hallways like auroras of the north. He screams with the piercing quality of an angel being relieved of its wings, jagged twin cuts spreading like fissures down his back from his shoulders to his pelvis. For added measure, the belt covering his mouth eventually breaks and is spit into Agent Penn’s face, so they decide to leave him like that as they splash river water over him to make him a little more presentable.

“My associates will come for you soon,” Agent Penn’s fingers slide under the blindfold. Arthur resists the urge to bite them off. For now, he shakes, exhausted and his throat as raw as the rest of his bloodied skin. “You’re not technically wanted as highly by Sisika than by our agency, it seems. We’ve been paid to make sure you’re no longer a nuisance by someone you’re surely familiar with.”

Arthur doesn’t answer him, his brain rattled outside of its cage and tuned out to the rest of him. Pain paints him like streaks of lightning on a stormy night, blood dripping like rain. Agent Penn doesn’t seem to notice, much less care.

“I heard you screaming, Morgan,” Agent Penn continues, no sadistic delight to him like Burr, but a savagery to his voice that suggests no pity. No remorse for the animals they’ve degraded themselves to. “I didn’t know you had it in you—I wonder if Heaven heard you, shaking the ground so hard you must’ve woken up the Devil.”

Agent Penn brushes hair from Arthur’s face, ignoring Arthur’s pained glare promising death. “Even the most wicked may be forgiven by God, or so I was taught to believe,” he continues, glancing at his bloodied glove with disgust. “As you can see, I’m not much of a religious man anymore. I saw too much bad in the world to be blindsided by faith.”

A solid knock at the door behind Agent Penn has him rising to his feet. “Behave, and maybe your death may be quicker than you think,” he warns, and then tears the blindfold free, tossing it to the side. While he heads to the door Arthur’s mind whirls in place, dizzily tipping over and revolving on a wobbly axis.

The door creaks open. “He says he’s here for Morgan,” a guard’s gruff voice catches Arthur’s ears. He can’t see past Agent Penn or the guard standing before him, having a harder time keeping his head up. At least Penn insisted on putting something on Arthur, if not to insinuate they hadn’t just tortured him for hours on end.

Agent Penn steps out with a pleasant exchange of greetings. Something’s off, Arthur can tell with his one good ear while the other sits in a ringing deafness. Agent Penn appears with another man in the blues of a Sisika guard.

Dark skin catches his eyes. “I wasn’t aware you’d be here so soon,” Agent Penn eyes the man with arms crossed in front of him, several inches shorter than the newcomer. “Even then, I didn’t expect them to fetch a…whatever the hell you are.”

“They give jobs to anyone these days,” a low voice answers him, devoid of anything telling. Arthur’s ears strain to pick up the sound, mind fuzzy but not completely gone. “I’m only here for transport. The agency reps are waiting to escort him to Leviticus Cornwall in Annesburg.”

Agent Penn nods, the disgust in his voice is clear. “Sure, sure. Be careful, ‘cause even though he’s not much to look at now,” Penn’s eyes turn to him and Arthur feels his heart stop when the other dark-skinned guard does, brown eyes staring him down with disinterest. “He’s an animal. Worst of the worst.”

“So I’ve heard,” the man responds, tipping his hat over his eyes. “I need to get him moving or I’ll be taking his place.” Dark black hair frames the sides of his face. Arthur blinks blearily, trying to figure out if—

“Can he move?”

“Huh?” Agent Penn fixes the guard with a suspicious stare. “Oh, yeah. Just get him on his feet, he’ll pretend he’s as limp as a doll. Living like a beast, he’s bound to look like one, too.”

Dark eyes roam over Arthur, Arthur’s throat clenching tightly as he dares not speak a word. Instead, he stares until the guard looks away. “He’s scum.”

“That he is,” Agent Penn motions to Arthur, wiping his hands of him with a dismissive wave. “Alright, get him out of here. I don’t want to see the bastard’s mug for as long as I live.”

“Of course.” Then, turning to face Arthur, the mountain of a man in clothes that barely fit him strolls over to Arthur, boots squelching in pools of blood. “He come in like this?” he asks, gloved hand wrapping around a bruised bicep. The other braces on his hip, gentle despite the fingers digging into his hipbone.

With a grunt, the agent looks over him carefully. “Make him scream, will ya? Boy’s got a pair of lungs on him.”

Fingers squeeze Arthur’s side gingerly, like a promise. Arthur finds himself hauled to his feet; his weight braced against the broad chest behind him.

 _Charles_ hides his eyes under the curve of his hat. A knee digs into Arthur’s spine, forcing him into a mocking bow. “I’ll make him beg.”

Then, pulled back to his feet, wheezing all the while, Charles remains silent as he pushes Arthur past the sneering face of Agent Penn. The guards pass easily enough, all eyes hardened with the same disgust while Burr is noticeably absent. Most likely cleaning his tools for the next poor bastard, Arthur reckons with a feverish shiver.

Charles’ lips press against his ear when Arthur hears the boots of the guards suddenly moving toward them. _“Go with it,”_ he murmurs lowly, voice just above a whisper. “I won’t hurt you.”

Arthur, half out of his mind and focusing on the delirious part that finds a loophole in Charles’ logic, suddenly thrashes in Charles’ grasp. The strong hands on him have only seconds to catch him, slamming him against the stone wall.

“ _Knock it off,”_ Charles snarls, falling into his role far too perfectly. Exhausted and drained of any fight as Arthur is, something starts with a snap in his belly, leading him into his own role. Lips come against Arthur’s ear, an arm pressing Arthur’s shoulders into the wall as Arthur’s head wrenches to the side. “Or I’ll let them hold onto you for a little while longer, _filth._ ”

Arthur’s lips split in a bloodied feral grin. As much as he’d like to pretend he didn’t just whine at the force of Charles against where the whip pierced his skin, he snorts in pained breaths. “I’d like to see you _try,_ ” he spits, a glob of blood and mucus splattering against the wall. Charles hauls him away, nearly throwing him off his feet. “Ain’t much of a man of inaction, y’see.”

“I see plenty,” Charles’ voice carries the undercurrent of a growl. “Like you on your knees. I’ll make you _beg_.”

A shudder courses through Arthur. He swallows, brain going numb. Heat pools—somewhere, except he feels like most of his insides are hanging out. The thin, ratty clothes he’d been forced into do nothing to stop blood from staining every surface he touches.

“I’ll make you scream,” Charles promises aloud, snickers rattling amongst the guards as they reach the exiting doors of the secretive little building. Arthur’s heart pounds in his throat as they grow close, though not solely for the prospect of freedom. “The boys asked me to make you rattle the heavens. I think you can do better than that.”

Arthur swallows, tongue lolling in his throat. “What d’you think, _officer?_ ”

Charles shoves him against the wall again as the guards move to open the doors, this time much gentler. It still hurts like a bitch, Arthur breathing hard as his body trembles with the force. As the doors start to click open, Charles presses a leg between Arthur’s thighs.

“I think God himself will hear you,” he promises, and then turns, slashing the two guards’ throats as soon as bodies of other slain men become apparent when the doors swing open.

Desire, black-fingered and sticky, climbs up Arthur’s throat when Charles pushes him along, resting him against the wall after slicing the throat of an oblivious guard. Charles leans past the wall to check for anyone coming, and then turns back to Arthur.

Dryness sticks in his throat, making his tongue heavy and his limbs weak. “Gonna arrest me, officer?”

Charles’ eyes widen, then darken. A rough hand grabs Arthur—he yelps, leading to Charles’ fingers soothing the spot as another hand wraps around his waist. He hasn’t noticed his knees collapsing until they do, failing on the spot.

Sadie and John become distinctive blurs as they run from the coastline, moving like ghosts as they crouch through the thin grasses.

“I’m taking you in,” Charles speaks lowly in his ear, hands firm but too gentle on him, a sharp contrast to the day Arthur’s had. “To be questioned thoroughly. You don’t mind, do you?”

Arthur laughs, croaking with broken breaths and doesn’t stop as John slings an arm around him and helps Charles drag him to the boat waiting by the banks.

**Author's Note:**

> If you sing high enough, maybe they'll hear you.
> 
> Also, a quick mention--this _may_ contain a second chapter that will involve sexual content beyond the scope of torture. Consensual, yes, but sexual nevertheless. I am undecided as of yet.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
